Winemaker Notes
This is a powerful, attention-grabbing wine, with taut muscularity. It offers magnificent aromas of rockrose, mint and hints of ginger. The substantial palate is full with expressive black fruit notes lifted by peppery schist tannins (the seasoning provided by the Sousão). The long, lingering aftertaste indicates impressive ageing potential.
Blend: 33% Touriga Nacional, 35% Touriga Franca, 15% Sousão, 12% Alicante Bouschet, 5% Other
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Vintage Port is a blend of 33% Touriga Nacional, 35% Touriga Franca, 15% Sousão and 12% Alicante Bouschet, plus miscellaneous others filling out the blend. This was bottled about a month before tasting after 18 months in seasoned vats, but the just-bottled sample was not really ready. This was instead a pre-bottling sample. It comes in with 115 grams of residual sugar.
Range: 97-99 -
Wine Enthusiast
The structure of this wine is dense in tannins that balance the opulent black fruits. The sweeter style of the wine is balanced by the ripeness of the blackberry fruits freshened by the fine acidity. Drink from 2028. Cellar Selection
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Wine Spectator
This offers of a lovely mix of raspberry, black currant, plum and fig pâte de fruit notes, which stretch out slowly over a ramrod straight graphite spine. Bramble, anise and apple wood details are tucked in neatly on the finish, giving this a compact feel for now, but everything is in place for a long, steady maturation in the cellar. Shows a pleasant, dry edge to the finish. Best from 2035 through 2055.
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James Suckling
Finished aromas of crushed berry, graphite and stone. Full body, very sweet with a tangy almost sweet and sour character. Distinct flavors of dried oranges and dark berries. Medium tannin structure. Very ripe yet fresh. Try in 2025.
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Wine & Spirits
Sweet and sleek, with a black-mushroom savor, 2017 is a fat and happy vintage for Vesuvio. The 800-acre property, on the south bank of the Douro just above the Cachão da Valeira, was originally developed by António Bernardo Ferreira, and remained in his family until the Symingtons purchased the estate in 1989. It has a range of expositions, from the riverside, at 425 feet in altitude, to the top of the ridge, at 1,735 feet, marking the entrance to the arid Douro Superior. This is a modern Vintage Porto, with a refinement and ease to its purple-plum-and-bitter-chocolate richness, the alcohol beautifully integrated into the wine.
Port is a sweet, fortified wine with numerous styles: Ruby, Tawny, Vintage, Late Bottled Vintage (LBV), White, Colheita, and a few unusual others. It is blended from from the most important red grapes of the Douro Valley, based primarily on Touriga Nacional with over 80 other varieties approved for use. Most Ports are best served slightly chilled at around 55-65°F. To learn more, see our full Port Wine Guide
The home of Port—perhaps the most internationally acclaimed beverage—the Douro region of Portugal is one of the world’s oldest delimited wine regions, established in 1756. The vineyards of the Douro, set on the slopes surrounding the Douro River (known as the Duero in Spain), are incredibly steep, necessitating the use of terracing and thus, manual vineyard management as well as harvesting. The Douro's best sites, rare outcroppings of Cambrian schist, are reserved for vineyards that yield high quality Port.
While more than 100 indigenous varieties are approved for wine production in the Douro, there are five primary grapes that make up most Port and the region's excellent, though less known, red table wines. Touriga Nacional is the finest of these, prized for its deep color, tannins and floral aromatics. Tinta Roriz (Spain's Tempranillo) adds bright acidity and red fruit flavors. Touriga Franca shows great persistence of fruit and Tinta Barroca helps round out the blend with its supple texture. Tinta Cão, a fine but low-yielding variety, is now rarely planted but still highly valued for its ability to produce excellent, complex wines.
White wines, generally crisp, mineral-driven blends of Arinto, Viosinho, Gouveio, Malvasia Fina and an assortment of other rare but local varieties, are produced in small quantities but worth noting.
With hot summers and cool, wet winters, the Duoro has a maritime climate.